Loving yourself

For most of you who know me personally, when you read the title of the note you thought I was going to launch off into the “Wild World of Whacking Off”, lol. I’ll save that topic for another time.

Do you want someone to love you unconditionally? Well, do you give yourself 100 percent unconditional love? If we really expect others to love us unconditionally, then we have to love ourselves first.

It is easy to point the finger at our significant other and say all of the things that are wrong with them. It is harder to point our fingers at ourselves and ask, “Why is this my experience?” It’s hard to look at our past and present to see why we are experiencing a lack of self-love.

Unfortunately our society and our educational system don’t give us the knowledge we need to build this sense of love for ourselves. There is no “how-to” manual. Our family is the only structure that offers us a hint of this 100 percent unconditional love, and if we were raised in a semi-dysfunctional (or extremely dysfunctional) family, then the odds of finding it are against us.

At some point in our lives, we have to come to the decision to love ourselves, for our personal benefit and for the benefit of those who love us. A lack of self-love will ultimately turn an optimistic relationship into an unhappy one because neither person will be able to express unconditional love.

Learning to embrace yourself and love yourself unconditionally isn’t easy. What do we need to do?

Acknowledge that you have to love yourself unconditionally before you can love anyone else.

Accept that your self-love can only come from you.

Start with yourself, you have to stop looking to others for love.

Nurture yourself like you were a baby. Treat yourself to a solo dinner, go to a spa by yourself, tell yourself that you are beautiful.

Discover all the things there are to love about yourself. You can ask friends to tell you what they like about you as well as thinking about the things you love about yourself.

See what your strengths are, and build your life around them.

In the end I hope you will finally attract the love in your life that you were missing before.